Break the Fourth Wall of Advertising for Your Kids

As I cleaned out my files, I rediscovered this really lovely 2021 National Geographic article "Talking to Kids about advertising," where they used our Gatorade story as the introduction.

Seeing so many wonderful people also quoted in Heidi Borst's piece, who I looked to for guidance as I started my own adventure through writing/teaching digital literacy, was a trip!

It would be around this time I developed our young family's understanding of advertising and how it affects their brain development, plus how we as parents could guide them through this environment. Our kids were both under six years old and loved to hear how their brain works, fortunately. I started to understand that talking about brain development empowered them to be critical thinkers.

As I started to study YouTube, I already knew enough about brand sponsorships and native advertising myself to pick out advertisements before my brain attached itself to a desire for the product.

As I picked apart how I did that, the key was clear: The first step to talking about advertisements with kids? Just point it out. Break the fourth wall of advertising and make it a game to find their favorite YouTuber's sponsored ads or brands in their videos. Some are clear, others not so much. And I can say the sparks to create this community for families and educators to learn digital literacy started with my personal inspection of advertising.

#InfluencerAdvertising goes even deeper, which is why I started talking to experts for #OutThinkInfluencers to help families, educators, and kids work through the ever heavier veil of advertising.

How do you talk to kids about it? How do you talk to yourself about it 😂?

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Image credit: National Geographic

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